XFCE: Less Is More

GTK is a very nice GUI toolkit. GNOME is rickety and parts, if not the whole thing, tend to crash way too much. You may have gotten a stable implementation on your Linux system, as CentOS does, but that’s only because you got one which was somewhat older and had been fixed. It’s the nature of GNOME development to ignore bug fixes, per se, and simply include fixes in the next release. That’s the next release which has lots of new features and lots of new bugs. The whole project is marked by an open hostility to fixing any previous version. Indeed, the developers don’t even want to discuss it. We could say the same for Qt and KDE; it’s a mess because nothing ever really gets fixed. Both desktop environments simply keep rolling forward, at a breakneck pace.

Let’s face it — that’s the way it is. Open Source tends to operate that way because most of the developers are hobbyists working on their own time. Hobbyists tend to obsess over new features and flashy stuff, and have no time for the drudgery of making it actually work. The Linux kernel and some of the essential subsystems receive a tremendous amount of corporate care, so they tend to work better, but the desktop environment (DE) is always broken. That’s in part because they do way too much for something which is never really fixed.

Many of the complaints about Ubuntu’s recent 9.10 release (Karmic Koala) seem tied to one or the other major DE, GNOME or KDE. That’s my own experience. Quite some time ago, I gave up on KDE. All the lovely promises, but it never really worked well enough. With the new 4.x series, they destroyed one of the few real advantages by reducing the configuration options. I began using GNOME simply because it was the default on CentOS, and RedHat had taken the time to fix almost every bug you might notice — but it was the ancient 2.16 release. The KDE version for CentOS was unfinished, but about the only hope for better is the KDE-Redhat Project. There, it’s all or nothing, since they can’t maintain your preferred select release. Also, it’s nowhere near as polished since they merely build the upstream supplied code from the KDE Project with RedHat branding.

On a philosophical level, KDE is simply the Windows GUI done right. GNOME is some of that, but takes more from the Mac GUI. As noted, both simply do too much for the amount of bug-fixing they get. What if you offered something a little less all-encompassing? Can we get good function without going too naked — like FVWM, IceWM, etc.? If a DE does less, there is less to go wrong. How much is enough? You can surely find many in-betweens, such as Enlightenment and XFCE. With the latter, you get the consistency of the GTK GUI, but little of the crashing you get with GNOME. I’m not aware of any similar projects with Qt, but I haven’t checked lately. In my case, XFCE does enough.

I miss the window event audio cues which came with XFce 3.x. The older style toolbar was adequate. If you needed extra widgets, you could run them separately as dedicated applications. With the recent 4.6 release included in the Ubuntu Karmic series, you get all the best and latest, and it’s configured by default to look very much like the GNOME DE. That is, you’ll see a thin toolbar top and bottom of the screen. The widgets are considerably more limited in types and function. Again, you may not like the limitations, but there’s less to break. Over the years when I’ve played with XFCE, I’ve typically preferred to run GKrellM to satisfy my urge to keep an eye on things, and allowed the toolbar(s) to be just a menu holder, and later a window-tracker. I’m not a genuine devotee of any DE, simply because I can adapt to most of them with enough use, and get what I need from my computer with just about anything. I can almost run console only, if it comes to that. Still, I want as much convenience as I can get without the complications.

My disappointment with Karmic’s GNOME was enough to prompt a change. I kept running into a problem with something so silly as Aisleriot. I’d be playing away on Freecell and suddenly the GUI would crash and log me out. I chased down every log I could find, tried various tweaks, all to no avail. I realized whatever it was, it didn’t hit the logs, because after testing different attempts to fix, the contents of the logs kept offering totally different clues, none of which seemed connected to my experience in the voluminous bug reports one finds in the Ubuntu community. Sure, I could have simply chosen another card game set. The point is I play such games to allow my brain to process in the background something important enough to refer it to the mystical processes. The card playing redirects my conscious mind while the subconscious carries on the important work. (Yes, I’m a complete weirdo, but it works for me.) This bug stood in the forefront of other things I didn’t like about the way GNOME was working. I’m tired of distro-shopping, and this was as close as I could have gotten so far on this machine, and still have some hope of eventually having a very stable, long-term OS and desktop. So I installed XFCE, essentially shifting my system over to Xubuntu.

Because my screen is so wide, using GKrellM in sticky mode is perfect. I can afford to “waste” lateral space. I’ve loaded it with all the monitors I care about, and still have some empty space below it, but I don’t feel the urge to fill every available pixel of my screen. There is a lot of empty space on the two panels, but I’m not too concerned right now. I like keeping various functions in certain corners to maintain old habits, and there’s really no compelling reason to change. XFCE offers just enough adaptability I don’t have to waste time retraining myself. I can simply do my work the way I prefer. For now, it’s a keeper. Just to play it safe, though, I installed my old favorite XPat2, since I like how it works better than Aisleriot. I can keep my preferred color scheme, which is Dirty-Ice; I use the old Trench window style, and the Blue Steel theme on GKrellM. I end up with something far less Windows-like, and more in the Unix style. I’m sure I could get by with my other old favorite, IceWM, but I have gotten into some less Spartan habits.

For the most part, I’m tired of testing and poking. I’m not a hobbyist; I’m just a user who prefers Linux and BSD and won’t consider using Windows without a gun pointed at my head. Okay, I suppose if I was restricted to hardware on which Linux simply would not work at all, I might be stuck with it, but God has been gracious to give me something just inside the circle of hardware compatibility for Linux. There are several threads of working habits, but I’m trying to reduce them to save time. I’m getting older and there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. At this point, I can no longer consider KDE, and I’m about to drop GNOME. If XFCE continues to offer just enough of the DE continuity, and I don’t have to fight obscure bugs to use it, that’s one less issue I have to consider when the inevitable upgrade comes.

Xubuntu it is.